Cultural appropriation be damned. I am finally coming out of the closet as a trans-cultural Redneck and proud of it. Allow me to explain.

I was raised in the belly of the beast, San Francisco, by European immigrant parents who fully embraced upper class, European culture in all of its arrogant glory. We didn’t have the money, but I was taught to have all the right attitudes. They were drilled into me from the cradle: imported cheese, classical music, foreign movies, and a sneering disdain for the ordinary Americans who liked working with their hands, watching fights and drinking beer.

Still, despite this pressure to be an American elite, I kept slipping up. While the family was cooing over a nice runny Brie, I was in my room, squirting quick hits of canned Velveeta in my mouth, hoping no one would catch the tell-tale orange stain around my lips. Instead of being grateful for my Mom’s carefully packed school lunches, complete with brown bread and vegetables, I was desperate to get my hands on my schoolmates’ Wonderbread™ sandwiches and Hostess Twinkie™ snack cakes.

Music was an issue too. I kept my face politely bright when I was dragged to the symphony or the opera, feigning interest in Mozart’s Requiem or Verdi’s Madama Butterfly, but my heart wasn’t in it. Even as the musicians played and the singers sang, I had a separate track in my head playing Slim Whitman, Hoyt Axton, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Cash. I wasn’t a purist, by any means, of course. There was plenty of room throughout my school years for Top 40s music, but opera made me wish I could break out in hives as an excuse to leave the room.

Things got worse when I hit my hard-Left, highly-ranked college. With every passing year, it became harder to feign respect for the professors who droned on at the front of the room, reading off of stale old notes. As they preached Marxism in the classroom, either directly or indirectly, I couldn’t get past the fact that they lived in expensive homes, complete with Hispanic maids and Japanese gardeners, dined out at fine restaurants (organic before it was in), and regularly traveled to (of course) Europe. My classmates revered them; I thought they were pompous, hypocritical windbags, and the fact that I got good grades from parroting their cant back to them only increased my disdain.

I’ve promised myself not to tag any more posts until I clear those already cluttering the spindle — and they’re too good to let slip away.

It’s time for government to get off its moral high horse. Victor Davis Hanson hits another home run with an article reminding Democrat leaders that they’re not doing anyone any favors by focusing on such exciting things as climate change, transgender issues, and exerting control over the minutiae of every person’s life, even as real infrastructure crumbles at their feet.

When they [these Progressive moralists] are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control.

In this regard, think of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent promises to nullify federal immigration law — even as he did little to mitigate the epidemic of murders in his own city.

Former president Barack Obama nearly doubled the national debt, never achieved 3 percent economic growth in any of his eight years in office, and left the health-care system in crisis. But he did manage to lecture Americans about the evils of the Crusades, and he promises to lower the seas and cool the planet.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, likewise ran up record debt during his tenure, culminating in a $25 billion deficit his last year in office. Schwarzenegger liked to hector state residents on global warming and green energy, and brag about his commitment to wind and solar power.

Meanwhile, one of the state’s chief roadways, California State Route 99, earned the moniker “Highway of Death” for its potholes, bumper-to-bumper traffic, narrow lanes, and archaic on- and off-ramps. During California’s early-February storms, the state’s decrepit road system all but collapsed. A main access to Yosemite National Park was shut down by mudslides. Big Sur was inaccessible. Highway 17, which connects Monterey Bay to Silicon Valley, was a daily disaster.

Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, warned of climate change and permanent drought and did not authorize the construction of a single reservoir. Now, California is experiencing near-record rain and snowfall. Had the state simply completed its half-century-old water master plan, dozens of new reservoirs would now be storing the runoff, ensuring that the state could be drought-proof for years.

Instead, more than 20 million acre-feet of precious water have already been released to the sea. There is nowhere to put it, given that California has not built a major reservoir in nearly 40 years.

Preet Bharara — good riddance to bad rubbish. Some people had made noises about Preet Bharara maybe staying on as a U.S. Attorney in New York because he was going after corporate corruption. Except he wasn’t. He was engaged in corporate shakedowns — threatening corporations with lawsuits unless the corporations paid big bucks to Leftist organizations. Bharara was also the one who went after Dinesh D’Souza for a small dollar campaign violation that is ordinarily ignored even when big money is involved. It was payback for D’Souza’s exposes. And of course, when asked to resign — as is normal when a new government moves in the White House — Bharara did some grandstanding so that he could get fired. All of which, says Glenn Reynolds, proves that Trump was right to fire him. I think Trump should fire every single U.S. Attorney. I have no doubt but that they’re all tainted.

Naughty, naughty refugees. The grandstanding is that refugees from the Middle East are pure souls, escaping from a genocidal Hellhole. Putting aside the fact that all majority Muslims are genocidal Hellholes, this is crap. Most of the refugees are escaping economic stagnation, and the war and starvation that come with that, all of which results from the pre-medieval mindset controlling their nations. They are poor things insofar as they were unlucky enough to be from Muslim nations, but the reality is that they bring the pathologies with them. They don’t come here to start a new life; they come here to live on infidel welfare until they can take over. That’s the reality of Islam. It just is. That’s how they’ve been raised. It’s what they are.

Of course, refugee antisemitism is a Democrat selling point. One of the worst pathologies that comes into a country with Muslim refugees is a burning hot, violent antisemitism. Islamophobia is an imaginary condition, except for those Shia Muslims getting killed by Sunnis or vice versa. Attacking, mutilating, and killing Jews is the real deal. (And no, I haven’t forgotten the Christian genocide throughout the Muslim lands; it’s just that this particular squiblet is about antisemitism.)

Unfortunately, what American Jews, who hew Left, haven’t figured out is that this antisemitism, rather than being a reason for the Left to reject the Muslim refugees is a reason that the Left embraces them. As Daniel Greenfield points out in a scathing article, today’s Democrats actively embrace antisemitism and then, when called upon it, rather than admitting to their bias, make all sorts of craven statements in their defense:

The Democrats care about anti-Semitism.

They care so much that they had a presidential candidate and convention speaker who led an anti-Semitic riot through a Jewish neighborhood. “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” he had taunted his victims.

He became a close presidential adviser whose endorsement is sought after by every Democrat running for the White House.

They care so much that they had a presidential candidate and speaker at two conventions who had used racial slurs against Jews and declared, “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust.”

They care so much that the new deputy DNC chair, who had also spoken at a convention, has a long history with anti-Semitic hate groups.

From Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Keith Ellison, there’s a safe space for anti-Semitism on the left.

John Kerry should have been on Greenfield’s list. John Kerry is, to state it plainly, a despicable human being. Well, that might not be accurate. I’m sure he’s despicable, but I have doubts about that human part. He’s like some swamp creature who crawls through rich Democrat habitats preying on stupid heiresses. He’s also an antisemite who did everything in his power — undoubtedly with Obama’s approval — to destroy Israel.

The Progressives’ resistance to Trump’s indubitable Electoral College victory is highlighting the culture wars that have riven America. They have spent the last eight years building an alternative American model:

Women are perpetually on the verge of being reduced to a subordinate state comparable to that of women in ISIS territory;

Muslims are being rounded up and interned; the border must be opened completely with an abandonment of national sovereignty and identity lest Hispanics feel they are the objects of prejudice; and

America’s unremarkable weather patterns, along with a slight cooling trend, are indicative of apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming . . . er, climate change — as long as Progressive stalwarts in NOAA and academia can keep adjusting the temperature records. No wonder they’re in a blind panic now that half the country has come forward and said it’s time for a reality check.

Andrew Breitbart was right when he said politics is downstream from culture — especially to a Leftist to whom everything is political. This post assembles a variety of articles I’ve read in the past week, some of which seem more political than cultural, but all of which demonstrate the cultural war — the cultural civil war — currently ongoing in America. It’s one Progressives are determined to win, and we need to up our game if we don’t want to see Trump either prevented from taking office or driven from office without getting to do what Obama has done for the past eight years; namely, exercise the prerogatives of victory in a two-party system.

With the above in mind, here are some interesting items from the front lines of America’s culture wars. I’ll start with a cartoon someone sent me as I was writing the above:

So as not to run afoul of copyright issues, I no longer reprint political posters or cartoons from syndicated artists. Instead, I only reprint posters from anonymous posters makers or from named people who want their images to be shared. And the cool thing is that, looking to these sources, I manage to have so much brilliant material, combining wisdom and laughter about today’s political and cultural scene. I know you’ll enjoy these as much as I did. (Special thanks to Caped Crusader for his help.)

I’m going to try here to throw in as many good links as I can to help you to prepare for the upcoming election — and to understand the bizarre cultural Marxism that underlies so much of the battle in America today, as well as dislocations in the Middle East which are driving many pathologies throughout the Western world. Here goes:

No matter how bad Trump is, Hillary’s worse. One of the most infuriating things (at least for me) about this election is the grotesque hypocrisy on the Left. (Yeah, I know — what else is new?) This time, the hypocrisy takes the form of blackening Trump’s reputation in the most obscene way, while pretending that Hillary is a woman without stain. At least conservatives honestly acknowledge Trump’s personal weaknesses, only to focus on the strengths he brings to his candidacy. Meanwhile, on the Left, a substance-free St. Hillary is running against Satan incarnate. Thankfully, Ann Coulter has, with her usual élan, totally destroyed the Left’s line of argument. If you’re wavering, read it.

Hubris and ugliness. In fact, Lefty lies to the contrary, Hillary is deeply flawed. She lacks the humanity that would make an interesting epic character but, boy, does she have the hubris and arrogance that’s brought many people down. Couple that with Weiner’s compulsions and Comey’s cowardice and you have an election that, on the Democrat side of the aisle, reads like a badly written Green tragedy.

Will chaos theory still control the election? With Hillary being buffeted by Wiki- and Weiner-leaks, is she the chaos candidate in this election? And in that regard, I don’t think Comey’s reiterated decision not to recommend her for prosecution matters. Once he created an entirely fictional “lack of intent” standard and read it into the controlling statutes, unless there was an email standing, “I, Hillary Clinton, intend to violate national security laws because I’m stupid, for my convenience, and to hide the flow of illegal cash into my false charity and my very real deep pockets,” there was no way Comey could ever find anything that would justify referring her to the DOJ. That’s why he was able to get his team to “review” 650,000 emails in just a few days. But back to chaos theory. Neo-Neocon thinks that as Trump begins to look like the more stable candidate, the crown that Hillary managed to wear for much of the campaign season, he seems like the safer bet.

If you think Hillary’s bad, wait until you see Tim Kaine. I assume that, if Hillary wins, she won’t be in office long, as she’ll either die from whatever disease is bedeviling her or she’ll be arrested or impeached. Her departure from the White House won’t make things better. If you think Hillary’s an antisemitic Leftist, you ain’t seen nothing yet: Tim Kaine is much worse.

Linda Tripp — Hillary is worse than you imagine. Almost two decades after the Blue Dress, most people tend to think of Linda Tripp solely in the context of being Monica Lewinsky’s confidante. In fact, she pretty much sat right outside Hillary’s office, and had a front row seat to the true horrors of Hillary’s personal style and her politics. Given that Hillary’s corruption and pathologies have gotten worse in the intervening decades, we have to assume that everything she is and does will be exponentially worse.

The end of the rule of law. One of the reasons I think Hillary cannot win is because putting her in the White House sets the seal to the end of the Rule of Law in America. Since the Magna Carta, the Anglosphere has operated on the principle that no one is above the law, not even the King (or President). If Hillary gets the White House, we’ve abandoned that ancient, liberty-based principle and, in effect, created an American emperor. And if you’re wondering just how different the standards are for Hillary versus everyone else, just look at this nice graphic comparing her to General Petraeus.

As I’ve said before, the real war isn’t between the candidates, it’s a culture war, one that pits against each other conflicting visions of America. The media is relentlessly attacking Trump because the Left understands that, when Americans see what’s happened to America in the last decade or more, they won’t like what they see. Here are a few examples of the ugly outcomes of America’s culture war, along with one little corner of hope plus, as an added bonus, a thoughtful analysis about American gun crime:

Federal court strikes a strong blow against religious freedom. Sweet Cakes was the Oregon bakery that objected to baking a cake specifically for a lesbian wedding because the bakery’s owners are Christians who believe marriage is only between a man and a woman. The couple seeking the cake, instead of simply depriving the bakery of their custom, turned them over to Oregon’s fascist government, which proceeded to destroy the bakery financially, driving it out of business.

Please understand that what happened to Street Cakes wasn’t about lesbians getting their wedding cake. If those lesbians wanted a cake in Oregon, they could have enriched God-alone-knows how many different bakeries. Instead, this was about destroying Christians’ right to withdraw voluntarily from a competitive marketplace in order to protect their religious sensibilities.

The press is winning the culture wars. Even as more information emerges about Hillary’s criminality, her illness, her sharia-friendly aides, and her appalling record as Secretary of State, she’s still pulling ahead. Trump hasn’t done anything awful in the last few weeks because neither he nor Hillary shone in the debate. One therefore has to ask, why Hillary’s surge?

I have what I think is the one and only answer: The Media. The media deliberately built Trump up during the primaries to destroy more traditional candidates and they are destroying him now. I have never, never seen anything the like of which I’ve seen now. The steady drumbeat of hate directed at Trump is unprecedented in American history, as is the decision to abandon any pretense of reporting honestly about Hillary.

The problem is that even those who distrust the media are going to be affected. It’s kind of like the situation in an old cartoon that shows a man and a woman at the breakfast table, each reading the paper. She says to him, “It says here, ‘Don’t believe everything you read.'” His answer? “Don’t believe it.” For the average person, it’s impossible to know what to read and what to believe. But they still read and, whether or not they believe, they subliminally absorb the “Hate Trump, Trump is Evil, Trump is Dangerous” rhetoric.

For that reason, I think the Prager U video on the media is too temperate, but it’s still interesting:

Even #NeverTrumpers have to concede that Trump is the one who looked down upon the culture wars, built a barricade, and loudly stood atop it hollering “Stop!” at the top of his lungs. With Trump in the White House, political correctness and all its attendant evils might no longer be issues. So as you prepare to watch the debate, or as you think about the debate after having already watched it, let me just remind you of the craziness that is the American culture warin the Age of Obama.

A word of caution — as is true for the audience filing into the debate at Hofsta, let me warn you that there are triggering ideas here. They might make anyone who reads this post stop and think how terribly the Left has injured America’s moral backbone and common sense.

Damn women. There’s been a big to-do about the change in culture that sees people desperate to be in selfies with famous people. The ne plus ultra of this trend is a marvelous photo of Hillary standing alone on a box at the back of a room, with the rest of the room facing away from Hillary, arms extended in the air, with each person trying to get a selfie that includes Hillary. You can see the picture here, along with a great caption contest.

Perhaps because one of my Little Bookworms selfies, I’ve become immune to the selfie trend. That is, I don’t like it, but it doesn’t surprise me.

I wanted you to note something different about the picture: all those navel-gazing selfie takers, desperate to project themselves into their favorite candidate’s world, are women. It’s the damn college educated women who are propping up Hillary’s campaign. Speaking as a woman myself, perhaps it would have been better if the 19th Amendment had never passed. First Harding and now Hillary. How dumb can women be?

Conservatives need to throw themselves in the culture war. The Kaepernick capers reminded me of something rather sad about conservatives: we like fussing about things on Facebook, and we’ll boycott things that don’t really matter (forget Target; let’s go to WalMart), but we will not make an effort where it inconveniences us or ruins one of our pleasures. I’m guilty myself, in that I shop at Costco, which is owned by a rabid Hillary supporter. Shopping at Costco makes my life easier (and cheaper) and I’ve been unwilling to forego that.

John Hawkins points out that other conservatives, if they’re disturbed by the disrespect for our flag and our national anthem at sporting events need to stop going and stop watching:

CONSERVATIVES are why these overgrown jackasses can continue to be unpatriotic. That’s because you’re the people who are offended by their behavior, but you won’t do anything about it. That’s the same reason conservatives have lost the schools, Hollywood, the mainstream media and it’s why the NFL is turning into a bigger, even dumber version of the Daily Kos. If liberals are going to reward you for trashing America and conservatives aren’t going to punish you for it, a certain percentage of people are going to take advantage of that. That’s just the way of the world and as we see again and again and again, it’s a slippery slope. Today it’s the NFL; tomorrow it’ll be the NBA and MLB. Next thing you know, the NFL will be making kids listen to a lecture from Al Gore before they start the NFL Punt, Pass & Kick program while the adults will be forced to watch anti-gun lectures at half time. Why wouldn’t they do that if liberals will swoon over them in the press and conservatives will keep giving them money?

He’s got a point. Maybe it’s time to cross Costco off my list. (I can’t cross much else off, because I’ve pretty much removed myself from pop culture and I like my affordable generic products.

This morning, I woke up so angry about the Iran agreement that Obama has been pushing and about the faked RFRA outrage that I couldn’t even write. Every time I sat down at the computer, I choked on my own bile and my brain froze. I felt like a computer suffering from an electric surge. I medicated myself with a junk novel and some chocolate, and am finally feeling stable enough to write without exploding.

I’ve already said what I have to say about Obama and Iran, and about RFRA, so I’ll be brief. Obama is not dumb and he’s not just a Leftist ideologue. He is a man with a ferocious feral intelligence and he is genuinely evil. Regarding RFRA, it is not Jim Crow. What made Jim Crow so bad was that it was government action. The whole point of RFRA is that it’s supposed to protect individuals from government action. No one gets that; no one’s explaining it; if someone explained it, no one would listen; and Leftists are fascists at heart.

And now on to other things, to which I’ll link with brevity. Now that I’ve assuaged my anger a little bit with dime store romance, I have to go pick up my tax returns from my accountant, which will undoubtedly inflame me all over again. Here’s a video of me (I’m the baby):

You know how you know you’re a smart person? Thomas Sowell, in his inimitable way, says what you’ve been saying all along, including the bit about the apocalyptic mullahs who are not like the cold-headed Soviets. The latter feared mutually assured destruction; the former embrace it.

A British man and a German man envision a moral world 100 years from now. It’s like Huxley’s Brave New World, only infinitely worse, with man a slave to robots and vegetables.

Daniel Greenfield (aka Sultan Knish) analyzes the Left’s culture war, which is not against “culture” per se, but is a direct attack on America from the inside. He also believes that individual Americans, by clinging ferociously to their individuality and their values, can reclaim what we have lost, although it will be neither a swift nor an easy battle.

Passover is coming up soon, and I’ll publishing my annual Passover post about God, Moses, Pharaoh, and the nature of tyranny. Meanwhile, Robert Avrech will help you understand why, in this year’s post, Pharaoh has Obama’s face.

Even in awful times, there are funny things. One high school senior decided to turn the table on Duke University for having rejected her. At many stages in my life, I would have loved to have sent a letter like this one, but I lacked both the wit and the courage:

And now that you’ve had a good laugh, I invite you to join me again in the land of tears and anger: